


Walking on the Sun

by mrjengablock



Category: Superman - All Media Types
Genre: (in more ways than one), About Rural Communities and What Its Like to Live in them, Best Friends Share Secrets, Coming Out, Gen, Lesbian Lana Lang, Male-Female Friendship, Social Commentary, vaguely
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-20
Updated: 2020-10-20
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:28:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27112610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrjengablock/pseuds/mrjengablock
Summary: A young Lana Lang grapples with being different in a small town, while dealing with the supersized secret of her best friend and worst headache, Clark Kent.
Relationships: Clark Kent & Lana Lang
Kudos: 1





	Walking on the Sun

Lana Lang had a secret. 

It was one she’d had for a long time, nestled in her chest like a little blue robin’s egg. She’d hardly known it was there, at first, and she’d ignored it for a long time. Then, quite suddenly one day, the egg cracked, and the secret came spilling out like the yolk of an unfertilized egg. She’d tried to hold back the tide, but it oozed through her fingers, and the little fragile shell crumbled in her fierce grip. 

Now she was a girl filled with a gooey, gushy secret. She felt it slosh when she walked, felt it against her skin when people looked at her. Felt it behind her eyes when she looked at them. 

She wondered how nobody could see it. Was she that good at hiding? 

Maybe it was like one of those small town secrets that everyone knew but nobody was supposed to talk about (like, old Mary who runs the grocery store poisoned her husband, but he was a no-good wife beater so we don’t hold it against her). It wasn’t good to raise a fuss in a town like Smallville because everyone knew everyone else. You could almost be certain that you’d never leave; you’d just take up the business your parents owned or keep churning out crops to feed America while you struggled to put bread on the table. So whatever you did would be a story that your children, and probably your children’s children, would hear every market day for the rest of their lives. 

Was it just so unexpected nobody thought it was possible? She’d never heard of anyone like her here in town. She knew about the ones in the city, from television and books and the internet, but city folk were city folk. Things were different in the Heartland. Some things were better and some things worse.

Sometimes Lana wondered what her life would have been like, if she’d been born as someone else. If she’d been born in a city like Metropolis, would she let the secret spill out? Would it even be a secret? Sometimes she thought about that other Lana Lang born right here in Smallville, but born right. 

Or, no. Not  _ right _ . But… expected. Normal. 

Maybe  _ that _ Lana Lang was an orphan, or maybe she had parents. Maybe she was still friends with the boy next door, or maybe they were more than that. Lana had a tough time herself, sorting out her feelings for that blue-eyed piece of American humble pie she called a best friend. It was more than just proximity, though of course kids played with who they could. With no one for miles, the only playmates were old birddogs, chickens, and the kid who lived a couple miles down the road. 

No, she and Clark had always understood each other. She felt like he was a puzzle piece that fit her edges perfectly. They could talk back and forth about nothing for hours, or have a conversation with nothing but an exchange of glances. They knew everything about each other. 

Mostly. Mostly everything. 

She wondered if Clark wanted that other Lana Lang, sometimes. Wanted that red haired little girl who was besotted with him, who’d literally marry the boy next door and help on the farm. She wondered if he’d be happier. In a different world she could even see it happening. That boy with eyes blue as the summer sky and a laugh lighter than the seeds of a dandelion? It was almost a foregone conclusion that she’d have been in love with him from the moment they met.

She  _ did  _ love him, fiercely, and she would give anything, fight anyone to keep his smile bright. But she didn’t love him  _ like that _ . Not the way she was supposed to. He deserved the whole  _ world _ , not someone like Lana. But he was sticking by her and much as she felt he deserved better, she didn’t want him to leave her either. She clung like a burr and let her worries be worries and nothing more.

But that secret. She still had it, still felt like a person-shaped bag of yolk made of the thinnest membrane on the inside of the shell. It wouldn’t take much to tear her open. She already felt like she was going to burst. If anyone would understand her,  _ accept _ her, she thought, it would be Clark. 

She’d almost told him before, in fact. Once at her birthday party when she was twelve and Charity Bellows hadn’t come. She’d wanted so much to tell him why she was so upset. He’d been there, and wasn’t he her best friend? She knew he’d been confused and a little hurt that she wanted some girl who’d only just moved to Smallville to attend more than her best friend. He’d confessed it, and she’d told him that he wouldn’t be able to miss her birthday because she’d drag him out of whatever hole he was hiding in before she let that happen. 

Then again when she was fourteen and Clark and she were wrestling on the rug in the living room of that little farmhouse, and Ma Kent had jokingly asked when the wedding was. She’d wilted, pulled away, and Clark had been bewildered by her sudden change in mood. He’d even gone into the kitchen and she’d heard him whispering with his mother, asking her not to say that again because it was obvious Lana didn’t like it. They were good friends and he didn’t want her to be uncomfortable with him. 

Ma Kent, angel that she was, promised fiercely to never say something like that again. She’d even sat down with Lana and explained to her that she was the best friend she’d want for her child, and there was absolutely no expectation in her or her husband that Lana would ever marry Clark, or even date him. 

But of course there was. How couldn’t there be? A boy and a girl entering puberty at the same time, spending all their time together, who shared everything (mostly) and held nothing back? If not them, then who?

Who indeed?

Lana watched the crowd of students leaving the school, some getting on buses and others getting in beat up pickup trucks. All together, the high school boasted two hundred and fifty kids from four adjacent counties, some who had to drive an hour to get to school, and who sometimes had to come in late or not at all because they were helping with the planting or the harvest. A lotta kids who had dropped out, a lot more that still would. She’d heard something in the news that went something like: about one in four women in rural schools would drop out with an unplanned pregnancy, or would get an abortion before graduating. 

Combined with subpar classrooms, underpaid teachers, and the general issues of poverty that plagued small towns like hers, she could almost believe it. Lana sometimes looked at the enormity of it all, the size of the monster devouring her community, and she wanted to curl into a ball and cry. Other times she was filled with sharp, biting need to change everything that hit like sweet tooth cravings with more oomph. She breathed through both of them. 

_ Steady, Lana,  _ she thought to herself.  _ One step at a time.  _ She was a senior, almost to graduation. She’d beat the odds so far, every year, and she’d keep going. She’d leave Smallville and travel the world until it was as small as her hometown, and then she’d come back and show the people she loved that the world didn’t have to be a big, scary place. 

Just… one step at a time.

She couldn’t very well fix a broken world when she was all cracked up inside, anyway. 

Finally, she heard the quick shuffle of sneakers on gravel that signaled her best friend’s arrival. She turned to see him coming towards her with a sheepish smile and an apology on his lips.

“Hey, Lana, sorry about the wait. I had a question for Mrs. Finchman ‘bout that project.”

“See, if you were dumb like me, you wouldn’t be stuck in AP World History doing boring hard projects. You’d be doing boring easy projects with the rest of us numbskulls in US History.”

He frowned at her. “Lana…”

“ _ Ugh _ , I know, I know,” she pouted, cursing herself for the slip up. “Don’t got nothing nice to say–“

“Don’t say it,” they finished together, she exasperated and he, admonishing.

He continued: “Especially about yourself, Lana! That’s my best friend you’re talking about, and I promised you I’d beat up anybody who made fun of you.”

“In kindergarten!”

He sniffed, looking for all the world like one of those superior old biddies in Sunday congregation. “A promise is a promise. Don’t make me beat you up, Lana!”

She guffawed. “You’d sooner hogtie yourself to a moving tractor, you liar!”

“Keep testing me and we’ll see,” he remarked airily. He only managed to keep a straight face for a few more seconds before he broke down laughing too. 

She jostled him with her shoulder as they walked. Nearly two feet shorter than him and shorter about a hundred pounds, there was no way she’d even budge him. Nevertheless, Clark stumbled like she was a prize bull ramming him against a wall. He staggered like a loon, hand over his heart and an expression of mock hurt. 

She balled her fists and mimed boxing with a one-two jab. “There’s more where that came from, mister.”

They stared at each other, then he snorted and she chortled and they kept walking. 

This was without a doubt her favorite part of the day. Clark and her only shared third hour art, since he was above her in every academic subject. The only time they were together during the day was then, lunch, and now. Unlike the first two, their walk home was unhindered by judgy friends and the presence of dozens of other people. 

It was relaxing. A time to let the wind blow through her hair and bring in the spring air. Normally, it was just what she needed at the end of the day. 

She needed to take that next step soon, because they were sprinting to the starting line for the rest of their lives. Clark wanted to study journalism; he wanted to go to the city and see it for what it really was. 

And she needed to go further. She wanted to see the world for what it was. She wanted the world to see her for what she was.

She needed to start here, right now.

“Clark-”

“Lana-”

“Oh sorry, go ahead.”

“No, no, what were you going to say?”

“I, uh,” Clark looked nervous, eyes darting from one point over her shoulder to another. “Have something I need to tell you.”

“Wow,” Lana said, a little mystified at the coincidence. “Me too. Great minds think alike.”

Clark’s smile was brief and distracted. She wondered what he was worried about. Was something wrong at the farm? Suddenly, blabbing her secret didn’t seem like a good idea. No matter how kind and sweet Clark was, no one deserved to be burdened like that when everything was already going badly.

“Clark, what’s wrong?” She asked. “You look like you saw a dog run over by a combine.”

“Ew, Lana, why would you put that picture in my head?” Clark asked with a startled laugh. 

She grinned and punched him in the arm. As always, Clark’s muscles were rock hard beneath his soft cotton blue shirt, the result of the backbreaking farm work that all of Smallville participated in, farmers or no.

She threaded an arm through his own and locked his elbow to her side. “Well c’mon, Kent. Let ol’ Lana know your woes. Is somebody hasslin’ you again?”

“Nah, nothing like that,” Clark assured her. 

He allowed himself to be led, and the two friends meandered down the street, waving at those who waved at them. Lana didn’t need super hearing to know that the whole of Smallville thought she and Clark were “a cute couple”. She swallowed the bitter taste in her mouth. 

As always, Clark seemed to notice her discomfort. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders, letting his bulky body hide her more wiry frame from most prying eyes. She settled into his side, filled with such gratitude that she could have cried. Clark deserved better than her. He deserved a normal girl, someone who would love his smile and his eyes, who would love him the way he should be loved. That was not… not Lana.

They turned down the county road that would lead to the Kent farm and her own little homestead a few miles farther. The world was filled with natural noises—bugs in the tall grass and the shushing of wind through waving wheat. The sun was beginning to set the whole sky on fire. Molten gold and hues of pink and red reached out to them from that distant horizon. 

Lana breathed it all in. The clean country air, the faint smell of livestock and ripening crops. She loved her tiny town and its people. 

That’s why it scared her. How could she have so much love inside her, so much pride and joy, and not be terrified that her love would be scorned? She felt like she was stretched out over those golden fields, the strain of reservations exhausting her body and mind. Her secrets made the world a little scarier. A little too small, even for Smallville. 

“So, fella,” she said finally, as the streetlights faded into the stars, “what’s with the long face?”

“Lana have you ever had a secret that you were… were  _ scared _ to share?”

“Oh, uh,” she stumbled, caught off guard. Like he’d reached in and plucked it outta her mind. “Y- Yeah. I, uh, that’s kinda what I wanted to talk about.”

“Huh?” Clark looked patently terrified for a second. “You  _ know _ !?”

“What? No! I was talking about  _ my _ secret!”

“You have a secret?”

“Ain’t that what you  _ just _ asked me?”

“Yeah, yeah. Sorry, Lana, I’m a little… jumpy.”

“S’alright, I think I get it.”

They were both quiet for a moment, staring off into space and contemplating their own small, separate worlds. 

“I think it might be easier to show you first,” Clark said finally. “But you have to promise not to freak out, okay?” 

“When have I ever freaked out, Kent?” 

“Just. Promise, Lana?”

“I promise I will not scream and run no matter how terrifying and grotesque whatever it is you’re about to show me is,” she smiled at him, ignoring the frisson of nerves down her spine. “You growin’ a second head, Clark?”

He chuckled, but it was distracted. She frowned. 

He wasn’t really growing a second head, was he? He was stubborn enough with just one hard skull.

He lead her into the field, and they picked their way through with the surety only a farm kid could have, sweeping back stalks and wiggling through rows upon rows of corn. 

They were walking obliquely toward the Kent homestead. Was it something at home? Now she was worried something was wrong with the farm again. She had to bite her tongue to keep from asking. 

“Okay, I think here is good,” he finally said, casting his eyes about like there was something marking this patch of dirt and crop as more perfect than some other patch.

She stuck her hands deep in her pockets and raised her eyebrows at him. 

“So what’s the news, writer boy?”

Clark cleared his throat.

“Okay. I’ve planned this a bit but now I’m kinda spacing on what I planned to say so, uhm. Let me know if you get lost.”

“Okay,” she agreed.

“I’m adopted.”

Lana nodded. She knew that. He knew that she knew that. That wasn’t what he was gonna tell her.

“And my parents found me in a field, not an orphanage.”

She knew that too. She waited patiently.

“But I wasn’t just in the field. I was inside a ship.”

“A ship? Like a schooner?”

“Like a spaceship.”

She blinked. 

“Uh. Okay.  _ Like  _ a spaceship or… a spaceship?”

“A spaceship,” he nodded, confirming.

“Oh. Okay. Uh. How d’you know it was a spaceship? Like, was it obvious?”

“Pretty obvious, yeah. It was—is, actually, it’s still in the barn—very ‘spaceship’, you know?”

“I’m not sure I do, but continue. Why were you in a spaceship? Did you, uh, get abducted by little green men?”

He shook his head. “No… I- I am the little green man.”

Lana boggled at him. Boggled  _ up _ at him.

“Clark. You are neither green nor little.”

“No, I mean. I’m not a  _ man _ .”

“Uh, is this still related to the spaceship? ‘Cause if that’s a metaphor, I am very lost. Are you, uh, a girl instead?”

“No! No, uh, that came out wrong. I’m not human.”

She stared.

“I’m an alien.”

She stared some more. 

“Huh,” she said.

“You don’t believe me.” His shoulders drooped and he got that hound dog look he got when his test scored less than 90.

“Not. Not that I don’t believe you.” 

She did. If Clark said there was a spaceship in his barn, one that he’d been found in by his Ma and Pa, then she believed it. Clark didn’t lie, not about important stuff. 

“I think I’m just… kinda confused. Maybe you could explain it again?”

She wasn’t sure if she was misunderstanding, or if Clark was saying something she did understand but couldn’t process. 

“Uh, okay. Yeah, sorry, this is why I practiced but. There’s not really a manual on how to do this.”

“Take your time.”

“Here, let me just,” he mumbled. 

Then he jumped. Or… no he wasn’t jumping, because jumping was a quick upward motion followed by a solid landing. This was something different. He was  _ ascending _ , like some princess walking up the stairs or Charlie in the glass elevator. Just moving softly upwards.

“Oh, my Lord,” she whispered.

Clark was… Floating. Honest to god, he was levitating in the air. She stepped over to him and swept the toe of her boot under his feet. No platform. No wires up in that big black yonder. 

Clark Kent was fuckin’ flying. 

“What does this have to do with the spaceship?” She asked faintly.

“Well, uh, my peoples’ homeworld orbited around a red star, and something about the yellow sun gives me, like, an energy I guess? I’m really strong and fast and…”

“And you can fly.”

“Yeah, and some other stuff.”

“Clark, you’re only supposed to get  _ one  _ superpower, don’t you read the comics?”

He snorted and dropped down to earth again. 

Lana felt a bit like falling herself. Oh. Oh wait. Clark had her in his arms before she even noticed herself tipping backwards, and he gently lowered her to the ground. She hadn’t seen him move; was that because she was so out of it, or was he so fast she just couldn’t see him? Maybe it was both. 

“So, uh. You’re an alien, and you’re from another world that has a different sun, and you got cool powers because we have a yellow sun.”

“Yeah, that’s about right.”

“But… why?” She looked at her hands. They looked so small and pale in the light of the moon. Insects screamed into the night all around them. The stars… the stars twinkled in the night sky and she realized she’d fallen backward to stare up at them.

Clark was looking down at her, worry etched in the lines of his face. 

“Why are you  _ here _ , if you’re not from here?”

He winced. 

And he told her. In halting sentences, with detours into explanations of the moving parts and the science that didn’t really help her understand but seemed to make Clark feel better, he told her about the shattered planet lightyears from their little blue marble. About the family he never got to have, and the desperate race to save some part of their world. 

“And- and the whole world just- fell apart? Just like that?”

“Far as I can tell, yeah.”

“And your pa— your father, I mean—he just sent his baby out into the universe with a prayer and some wishful thinking?”

“I don’t think he had much of a choice, but he seemed to know I’d be safe here. He knew I’d get… superpowers, I guess, because of the different environment.”

“Holy shit,” she intoned.

She looked at him. The same boy she’d been playing with since they were toddlers. He looked human! Never had looked anything else. But who’s to say what aliens were supposed to look like anyway? It’s not like anyone had ever met one. Well, someone had. Lots of someones. Everyone in Smallville knew an alien, even if they didn’t  _ know  _ it.

She looked back up at the stars.

_ Holy shit.  _

They stayed that way for a long while, quiet and contemplating, until he spoke again. 

“So, uh, what was… what’d you wanna say? Before I dropped the ‘I’m an alien’ thing on you.”

She’d forgotten for a moment. She’d been out there in the void, watching little baby Clark or whatever he’d been called before rocket through the cosmos, crying for a mommy who’d never hold him again.

A whole fucking world full of people who had babies like Clark and cool rockets and science and shit and they all just… just died. And here she was down on fucking earth, worried to death because she didn’t know how to tell her best friend she was a fucking lesbian. 

It was enough to make a girl laugh. She felt awful about it—Clark just told her his birth family, his birth world, had died before he ever got to know them—but she couldn’t stop the shaking, laughter spilling out in peals, yanking out her insides in sharp cords.

“ _ Lana _ .” Clark’s voice was a horrified whisper. “Lana, you’re  _ crying _ .”

She reached up to touch her cheeks and found that he was right. Her laughter was becoming choking sobs.

“Lana, I’m so, so sorry,” Clark said. “Please tell me what’s wrong? I didn’t… did I scare you?

“No I just,” she paused, giggling and hiccuping in her tears. “I-it just seems so  _ small _ now and, and, I- I was- was s-s-so sc-sca-scared. N-n-not you, Clark, never you, I’m just–“

She gave a plaintive wail, wrapping her arms around herself, and ducking her head so she didn’t have to look at anything. Trying to be small like she used to when the storms rolled across the plains. 

“Lana,” Clark’s voice sounded from somewhere close, and then he was gathering her up into his arms like he could hold her together with strength alone. Hell, maybe he could, with that alien strength of his. 

She didn’t know anything about aliens, or space, or other planets. All she knew was that Clark was the best friend in the world—the universe maybe. She wrapped her arms around his neck and cried into his soft cotton shirt. He just stood there and held her, doing nothing but rocking as he murmured comforting words. 

She was suddenly transported to the time when she and Clark had gone swimming in the creek—little kids running around with only their underwear on. She’d slipped on a smooth stone and fallen hard. No broken bones or anything but it had jarred her something fierce. Clark had swept in then, too, grabbing her up and pulling her out of the water. He’d held her while she cried in fear, more than in pain. 

“Clark, I’m a… uh,” Lana mumbled into his chest, holding tight to the young man who’d been her lifeline her whole life. “I… I don’t like… boys.”

It left her in a heated rush; her insides turned to jelly and froze, jabbing fear into her spine. It was stupid, it was so stupid! She trusted Clark. He would never hate her, never hurt her, and yet here she was shaking in fear, feeling like she was hanging over an open pit full of spikes.

“I’m a lesbian,” she forced out, because there was ‘not liking boys’ and there was ‘liking girls’, and those things didn’t always mix. “I like girls, and I always have, and I’m so sorry because I can’t be your girl next door like every-fucking-body in Smallville says I should be! And I love you, I love you so much, but I can’t love you like that! I just can’t.”

She gasped, the sobs coming with a vengeance, shaking her apart. 

“I’m so so so-o-oorry,” she cried.

“What’re you sorry for?” Clark whispered, not yet crying but sounding choked up. “Lana, what’re you sorry for? Sorry for being my best friend? For being the only person I can trust to still love me, not be  _ afraid _ of me, after I told ‘em I’m a goddamn alien from outer space?”

She couldn’t speak around her tears, so she shook her head furiously, wiping snot all over his poor blue cotton t-shirt.

“I love you, Lana,” he hugged her fiercely, picking her up off the ground and cradling her against his chest. “I love you because you’re always there for me. You never look at me and see something that’s not there. You never have any expectations for me, good or bad, and I- I could never have any for you, either. We’re stuck together, don’t matter how. You’re my  _ sister _ .”

Lana wrapped her arms around his neck, burying her face into the crook and crying for all she was worth. 

The night was warm around them, a comforting blanket wrapped about their shoulders as they held each other together, sharing pain and friendship and pouring secrets and stories into each other with no filter. Clark told her about the ship buried under the barn, and Lana told him about Charity Bellows and Amanda Rogers, and Whitney Chesterfield. 

They cried and laughed and let the hours slip by, heedless of school tomorrow because their lives were happening right now. 

In the light of the rising sun, Lana blearily looked up into the sky and smiled. She leaned into Clark’s shoulder, and he leaned into hers.

“I love you, Clark,” she mumbled. 

He wouldn’t take it the wrong way. Couldn’t, now that he knew her secret. 

“I love you, too, Lana. So much.”

He pulled away from her gently and took her tired, blotchy face in his hands. “I am never going to leave you in pain, Lana. I will never, ever,  _ ever _ think any worse of you for who you are or what you want. You are the strongest, most wonderful person I’ve ever known and I’m proud to call you my friend.”

If her cheeks weren’t already red from crying and rubbing at them, she’d have turned a crispy pink at that. 

“I could say the same of you, Clark. Making friends with you is about the only thing I done right in life.”

He looked like he was going to protest so she shook her head. 

“Sorry, I got so worked up. Musta startled you.”

“A little,” he said with a sheepish smile. “But I never doubted you. I knew it might take some getting used to, but you’d never hate me.”

She pulled him close again, trying with all her might to wrap her arms around his broad chest. “Never. Never, never, never.”

“Same to you, Lana.”

When she’d finally blinked the last of the tears away, she let go of him and clambered to her feet, exhausted but jittery all at once. There was so much more to do. Everything had changed and yet nothing had changed at all.

But the world was so much smaller now, and she could see her little town on the map of the world in their little star system and she knew there was more in heaven and earth than was ever dreamed of in corn-fed Kansas.

“So, fella, what’s this I hear about flyin’?”

He laughed.

She smiled.

They flew. 


End file.
